


taste, what a bittersweet

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Data Greeting, Dreams, Monologue, Multi, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Reflection, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: “I had another dream last night,” Riku tells her. “You were in it. Sora was too, but every time I saw him he was always running away from me. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t catch up to him. And you weren’t running, but you were still by my side, and you looked so sad. You didn’t say anything but you just looked at me, with those big sad eyes of yours. Sora didn’t say anything either, even though I was yelling for him.”
Relationships: Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	taste, what a bittersweet

It starts with an accidental button press.

Even after defeating all of the data fights, they haven’t found any clues that he can follow up on. His dreams are frustratingly vague. So he’s back here, in front of the computer, fighting all the shadows of the Organisation again, and lying to himself in order to pretend that he’s doing something productive instead of just wanting to see Sora.

Riku is taking a break from trying to beat, well, himself (it’s not easy hearing his own battle cries in a fight against Sora but he has to use the volume for audio cues) when he accidentally leaves the menu and sees it. There’s another blinking option underneath the log in screen for the data analysis, called data greeting. Heart rate picking up suddenly, he tabs over to it and presses enter.

It takes a few seconds for the screen to load, but when it does he’s almost… unsettled.

There’s a list of worlds, most of which Riku is familiar with – he’s heard about them even if he hasn’t gone there himself. He squints at the screen as he scrolls through the list, and then hesitates near the end. He hasn’t been home in so long…

With a furtive glance over his shoulder, he makes his choice. Seeing the sun and sand of the play island rendered on the computer screen is… strange, to say the least. Even more disconcerting – he’s still playing as Sora. He turns Sora around on the beach a few times, finding that it’s impossible to jump up to the upper areas of the play island. Nor can he walk into the water. The computer screen almost makes him homesick enough to consider going back, but he hasn’t been to Destiny Islands since… he can hardly remember. Not since Sora disappeared, at least.

He presses the menu button in order to try and figure out what is going on, and a different menu than usual appears. He squints at the page… characters? Visual tools? What is going on?

Intent on figuring out what this section of the data means, he starts experimenting.

* * *

“It was strange,” Riku says, staring at the lab wall. Ienzo is on the other side of the room, so he speaks quietly. He doesn’t want this conversation overheard – it’s just between the two of them. If he was stronger, maybe he wouldn’t come here at all, but he’s always been weak. Without Sora or Kairi to speak to, the best he can do is look at them. He spends hours every day playing as Sora, but he has to come here himself if he wants to see Kairi.

“I was just going to take a break from the data analysis, but then I just got… sucked in.”

There’s a way to download the photos to his gummiphone – after he’d gotten over the strangeness of seeing the back of his head in full detail, he’d tried to figure out how everything in the new mode had worked. He opens his phone, sees the image there. Sora and Kairi standing side by side, their backs to the camera. Even when he’s in charge of creating the image, he can’t bring himself to have them face him.

“I tried recreating some scenes, of things that I knew had happened,” he tells her. Kairi’s expression doesn’t change. It hasn’t changed since she first went to sleep, all those months ago. “Nothing happened. I took some photos, but that didn’t change anything either.” He didn’t have to put them on his phone, but… he was weak. Seeing Sora and Kairi’s smiling faces had made his head light, and he’d put them on his phone because they had set an anchor in his heart. Seeing them made him stronger, strengthened his resolve.

“I had another dream last night,” Riku tells her. “You were in it. Sora was too, but every time I saw him he was always running away from me. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t catch up to him. And you weren’t running, but you were still by my side, and you looked so sad. You didn’t say anything but you just looked at me, with those big sad eyes of yours. Sora didn’t say anything either, even though I was yelling for him.” He looks back at his hands. “I don’t know if he could hear me or not. I don’t know if you could hear me either, because I was yelling for either of you to answer me and neither of you did. Does that mean that you’re together? Or are you apart, and I have to come and find both of you?”

He used to talk to Sora like this, in that long year when he slept. Naminé was there, had heard it all, but it wasn’t the same. She didn’t have the history that he did with Sora, and didn’t really understand how he had changed since he had left the islands. Even if she saw his memories, she hadn’t known him for that long. And Sora didn’t look at him and make him feel guilty. No, when Riku talked to Sora he felt guilty all by himself.

“This is like the worst call back ever,” Riku admits to her. “Instead of talking to Sora in his sleep, now I’m talking to you in your sleep. And Even says that you’re not even sleeping – you’re in stasis, just like he was. Your heart can’t hear me. Sometimes, I pretended, with Sora. Said things as if he could hear me, but just couldn’t respond. He didn’t remember any of it when he woke up though, so I suppose he didn’t hear any of it. It helped at the time, but not so much now. I know you can’t hear me.” He sighs.

He’d woken up in a cold sweat and had written down the details of the dream, just like all the others. He doesn’t know if it has anything to do with the realm of sleep or if his own head is making these up to torment him, but he wants to believe they’re something. Something to make any of it worth it.

“I woke up, but after I went back to sleep I had another dream. I don’t know if that one meant anything though. You and Sora were both in it, but you didn’t say anything then either.”

They’d all been lying in a bed, Sora and Kairi’s heads pillowed on his shoulders. Riku ached for that closeness. He hadn’t written that dream down – it was seared into his mind. If he closes his eyes he can picture it in vivid detail, the curl of Sora’s hand around his arm, how the arch of Kairi’s foot pressed into the back of his knee. The dream had lingered like it was real, and Riku was just trying to go to sleep with them curled beside him. Waking up had been like the shock of leaping into cold water.

He knows that it’s not a _real_ dream, not like the others. It’s not a hint, or clue, or prophecy, about where Sora or Kairi are. He shouldn’t be holding onto it as closely as he is, clutching at it like it’s a toy and he’s a child lost with nothing familiar in sight. He should write it down and put it out of his mind, clearing it for something useful to fill him instead. It’s just a _normal_ dream, an ache that has spiralled up from his heart to fill his already restless nights. The throb of guilt is sharp and hard in his chest, but he can’t bring himself to abandon the image. He misses them. He _misses_ them.

“It’s almost been a year since they put you under,” Riku muses. “Both you and Sora won’t be able to remember a year of your lives. That’s so much – and does it mean that I’m really two years older than both of you now? Are you stuck, while I’m out here, watching on? You don’t look like you’ve changed much. I used to try and measure how long Sora’s legs had gotten compared to his pants.” He snorts a laugh. “I wasn’t there when he woke up, but that must have been a shock. You though… it’s like time hasn’t touched you. I wonder why. You changed in that year when we were gone, but I wasn’t there to see it. I’m sorry, by the way. I didn’t come by because I didn’t know how I would look you in the eye. You wouldn’t have even been able to remember Sora – and I don’t think I could have kept that hidden. I didn’t want to keep it hidden.” He pauses, looking at her. “It was easier to stay away. And I’ve always done the easy thing. Sorry.”

A piece of hair has somehow fallen over her face – he could reach out and tuck it behind her ear, but he won’t. Her hair has grown slightly, but that’s the only change that he can mark. He hasn’t touched her since she went to sleep. He doesn’t deserve that comfort, not when she can’t feel anything at all. Can she feel anything, in her dreams? Is she dreaming? He wants to think so. Wants to think that she hasn’t been here, quiet and lax, with even her sleep greyed out.

“We’ve talked like this before, although you probably don’t remember. Well, I don’t know if you remember. I never asked you if you did. When your heart was missing, and Sora was out exploring the worlds for the first time and I couldn’t see any way but the darkness, you were there with me. I thought… I would have done anything to get you back. Turns out you were with Sora all along.” He laughs, mostly at himself. “Every time I talked to Sora, I was the closest to finding you. Closer when all three of us were together than when I held your empty body by myself. If only I had stayed by his side… maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe they would have been the same. I don’t know. We’d be different, all of us. Maybe…”

The piece of hair frames Kairi’s left eye. He can’t keep his eyes off it. Those weeks had been among the hardest of his life, even counting everything that came after. Trying to care for Kairi when despair and darkness were nipping at his heels, and he was in the deepest throes of his denial, and even thinking about Sora had driven him near wild with some emotion that he still isn’t able to put a name to. He could lean over, and tuck that slip of hair behind her ear, and press his lips against hers – but that’s just another evasion, another lie he would tell himself. He doesn’t move.

“When you were with me, it made me feel strong. Confident, like I had all the answers and was making all the right choices even though they were all the wrong ones. I saw Sora, in Neverland, and he told me I was being stupid, but I just ignored him. I blinded myself, willingly, only treading forward, thinking there was one path when I could have stepped away at any time. I thought the only way to get you back was to go forward, but in the end I was only good for delaying your return. If you had reunited with Sora faster, could your heart have gone back to your body? If Sora hadn’t had that Keyblade, would he have been able to figure out a way to get you back, even so? Would I have been any help at all, or would I just gotten in the way?”

That would have meant that Roxas wouldn’t have been born – nor Xion, or Naminé. He doesn’t know how he feels about that. The three of them are his friends, but to spare Sora and Kairi any hurt, he thinks he would do anything.

“I suppose that’s my problem, huh,” he whispers. “When Sora was sleeping, I would have done anything to save him. Roxas didn’t need to go back to him, but DiZ wouldn’t accept the time it would have taken to disentangle his existence with Sora’s. And I just… went along with that. Horrible of me, huh? I think so too.”

Being self-aware doesn’t help. If Even or Ienzo or Ansem the Wise told him that they needed him to do something to get Kairi to wake up, he would do it. It scares him, how much he would overlook to get her back. To get Sora back.

“I tell myself that’s another reason I don’t come up here that often,” he tells her. “If they don’t know how precious you are to me… but I have to make sure that you’re okay. That you’re still here, and that they’re still trying. Ienzo updates me nearly every day, but it’s not the same as visiting. As seeing you.”

He wants to look into her eyes. That brilliant blue, like the deep ocean currents.

“I’ll keep looking,” he promises her. “I won’t stop until I find an answer. And even if it’s selfish of me, I hope that answer means that we get to see each other again.”

Kairi is silent, but he’s used to that now.

“I’m going to go and rest, but then I’ll be back at it. When I make any progress I’ll let you know.”

It’s hard to turn her back on her; but he’s used to that now, too.


End file.
